


Half the Sky

by Stormwind13



Series: Core of Strength [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Mary Sue Big Bang, in chapter one, no detail, spans the whole of Konoha's history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormwind13/pseuds/Stormwind13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Women hold up half the sky." Mao Zedong</p><p>Women are the invisible pillars of any village. Konohagakure is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Senju Tamiyo

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Core of Strength series and as such, a couple of characters have made appearances there. This is canon to that series.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all."

She was raised on duty.

Duty to the clan, to what the head of the clan or his heir would require of her as any given moment.

(She was taught with that in mind. Sums and language drilled into her head. Manners for as many different courts and clans as there were waves in the ocean. She would never lead a country or rule a nation, but she would rule a house and clan from her husband’s shadow.)

Duty to her people, to whatever they would need and ask of her.

(She sat behind her father and brother as they listened to petitions and complaints, rendered judgements and bestowed favors. She herself would never sit in the judgement seat, but a lady of a house did such things as well, beneath her husband’s eye)

Duty to her family, to what they would demand of her.

(She learned to mediate arguments and sooth tempers. To speak with a firm tone and gentle hand. To know when punishment was appropriate or a simple chastisement. She learned to steer a conversation and turn hearts and minds without ever showing her hand. She would never command armies or direct troops in battle, but a wife would always be the hidden commander of a household)

And so it was on duty that she leaned when she was told of her marriage to Butsuma Senju. Nearly three times her age, his eldest son was nearly four years her senior, his second son of age with her, and his third son barely a year younger.

But he offered protection and a large bride price (enough gold to feed her entire clan and all that depended on them for a year, her father told her, enough men to guard them from the attacks of bandits and other chakra users who might want that gold) so her clan agreed. She was the eldest daughter of a family renowned for the strength and control of their chakras, so the match was advantageous.

The agreement was reached on day she turned fifteen.

On the day she turned sixteen, she was helped onto a litter along with three of her cousins and she started the month long journey to her new home and husband.

(She wrapped duty around her like a coat during the day and begged the rabbit goddess by night that her future husband would be dead by the time they arrived. The rabbit goddess ignored her pleas – the old man was still living)

She wrapped duty around her as she stepped into her wedding clothes and kept her gaze straight ahead.

The ceremony was lavish, as befitted the head of such an illustrious clan, but she could sense all eyes on her – it had been less than two years since the previous wife’s death. For the head of the family to take another wife so soon and such a young one at that….

Duty helped her make it through the wedding night without crying. She did that two days later, as her cousins wiped her clean, after her husband’s second visit to her bed.

(Her mother had told her of this night, had tried to prepare her as much as she could. But what sixteen year old wishes that her first time be to an elderly man who has his dead wife reflected in his eyes?)

Duty helped her grit her teeth when the household servants ignored her or turned to her new stepsons for orders. Duty helped her smile and play the dutiful wife while listening to her husband compare her to a dead woman while she listed the poisons in her garden.

Duty kept her from following her family into their graves when they were wiped out to the last babe by the Uchiha in retaliation for some slight caused by her husband in retaliation for another slight caused by the Uchiha.

Duty kept her from using those plants when she realized she was quickening, her womb filling with new life.

(She hated her husband then, as she poured tea and listened to the men talk over her and around her. As she attended two funerals, one right after the other, for two men she should never had been mother to. But duty stayed her hand then as well. Not to him. No, never to him. But she now had a duty to the people that depended on him both for protection and guidance. There was no one else she had a duty to. Not anymore.)

Duty to her household and his people kept her from drifting when he died.

(She had nearly lost her composure entirely when her eldest stepson told her the news. He had thought she was unhappy, had mourned his father’s passing. She let him believe his little lies and refrained from laughing until she and her cousins were alone)

Duty chained her to his son when she would have fled back to the land of her birth.

(His son. Her son would be taught the ways of her people and would never, ever know his father’s name. She would ensure it)

“I will not let my son die.” She told her stepson, her new clan head. “Your brothers said you had dreams of a peaceful world, where he would not need to. You will make that new world or I will burn this old one to ashes.”

(She would have. For her duty to her son’s clan and her own, she would have burned the world to the ground to rise out of the ashes)

He did.

And then he almost handed it over to the man that would have let that dream turn to dust on the wind.

(She did her duty then too. To this new world that her stepson was trying to create. And as she called for a vote (as the people chose who would lead them into this strange new world) and watched the hatred bloom in the Uchiha’s eyes, she knew that her duty was not yet over)

She did her duty twice over after that, both as a mother

(her son looked very little like his father and almost entirely her own and that eased a strange tight band in her chest. She would have always done her duty to him, but now she thought she could love him)

And as a council member, advising her Hokage in matters of state and diplomacy.

(It was a duty she was glad to do, to be asked her opinion and listened to. The Uchiha was a problem – she could see the resentment growing within and knew, someday soon, that he would break from this new world he claimed to love so much)

She urged the creation of an academy, where all children could learn the arts of chakra wielding and they could be instilled with a sense of both duty and loyalty.

(Shinobi was the word that was rippling through the world, tripping of the tongues of the gossips and rumor mongers. She found she rather liked that)

She was the one that insisted on set years of service in exchange for their learning, in exchange for the power the village was giving them.

(Shikake Nara agreed and the Uchiha argued for lower numbers. In the end, they agreed to a set of numbers that made all of them unhappy)

She watched her son grow and thrive in this new world and marry and she watched as her stepson’s children and grandchildren blossom into bright stars that would shine.

(As she reached the end and could feel the world fading around her, she realized that for the last fifty years of her life, that perhaps duty had just been another word for love)

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Hyuuga Hisa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Most men can't handle a woman forged in fire. They think they can, and as soon as the flames gets too close they keep stepping backwards.But they forget. We are like this for a reason. Throw a few leaves in a fire and it doesn't do much. Throw fuel, and it explodes. Most of us are already ablaze. So, when tending to a fire, be careful.”

She was born in the village’s first year, when no one truly expected this mixing of former enemies and allies to be successful.

(It was not called Konohagakure then. That would come later, when the remains of the Senju had finished creating the magnificent forest that would shelter them. She was five when the village truly became hidden in the leaves.)

She was five when she told her mother that she wished to be a shinobi (There were no kunoichi. That would not happen until she was twenty, far too late to mold her into the seductress or fine lady that kunoichi are expected to become.) and her mother told her that she was destined to be wed to her cousin, to join the main branch of the Hyūga Clan.

She was seven when she finally wore her family down enough for them to allow it, confident that she would join the scores of other girls that had tried and failed to pass the rigorous curriculum that had been set in place.

She didn’t care – she graduated, right in the middle of the class rankings, and she was a genin. No one could take that away from her now; village law (passed just six months before she graduated) stated that all genin were required to perform at least four years of mandatory service. She was safe.

(She slept with her headband every night, her fingers curling around the cool metal)

Her Jōnin sensei had no idea what to do with her, half a foot shorter than her three teammates and half their weight, but he did his best, trying to find her a specialty that she could excel at.

(She was, somewhat predictably, excellent at taijutsu. She also discovered she was a natural at channeling chakra through her body)

But she had to work twice as hard as her teammates, had to prove again and again that she deserved her place on her squad, that she had earned her hitai-ate. Because when she failed, it wasn’t because the techniques were too hard or she still had to grow into her body, it was because she was a girl. Because when the boys failed, it was because Mitsunari-sensei hadn’t explained it properly. When she failed, it was because she was incapable of understanding it.

(On her truly bad days, she almost believed it)

But she wouldn’t – couldn’t – quit because the year she graduated, the year she showed her family and the village and the council that she was just as good as the boys, that she could make it through the Academy, four clans enrolled their younger daughters.

(The first civilian girl wouldn't enroll for another five years and it would be another six after that before the civilians began to regularly allow their daughters to attend)

It took her two tries to make chūnin

(One more try than Inuzuka and two less than Kanda and Kitao and all her mother asked her was when she would stop this foolishness and return to the family and fulfill her duty. She was twelve)

That vest was her pillow. Six more years of freedom, six more years before she would be expected – allowed – to become the heir’s wife. She treasured every second of it.

(She kept hoping that he would grow tired of waiting and choose another cousin. The caged bird seal was her only way to be free)

She took mission after mission, stockpiling the experience and jutsus that she could, aiming for her final goal – Jōnin. That was her end goal, her real mission. She would prove that women were just as good in this new world, that they could be as free as they desired. For that, she would sacrifice everything.

(She formed herself around the shinobi code, made herself harder than she had ever wanted to be, because if she was weak, it wasn't because she was human, it was because she was a woman and she could not allow herself to be a woman. Not yet.)

It took her four times to make Jōnin. She had the qualifications, she had the stamina, she had the knowledge and the experience. She could defeat her teammates in spar after spar. Out think them, out fight them, out plan them.

But four times the judges

(All male and that burned her, made her clench her hands into fists and dig her nails into her palm so hard that they bled. She knew that there were women just as qualified to judge - weren't the Shodiame’s own stepmother and wife masters of Fūinjutsu? Or the Uchiha Clan mother a terror at genjutsu? They should have been the ones on that platform judging her.)

told her she wasn't enough.

Four times she bowed and thanked them for their time before leaving and learning more jutsus, taking more missions, forcing herself to learn one more nature transformation, one more ninjutsu. Anything to help her beat the clock she could sense ticking down. She was, after all, on a deadline. She had to pass before she turned eighteen, before her required Chūnin service was up.

The fifth time, the Hokage himself passed her telling her that she was a credit to both her clan and her village.

(No, she wanted to tell him, she was a credit to herself - her clan and village had only tried to shape her into something she wasn't. She bit her tongue enough to bleed and bowed deeply instead.)

His stepmother, Tamiyo Senju, stood behind him and it was to her that Hisa looked. This was the woman that had the Shodiame’s ear. The only woman to stand in the highest reaches of the government. This was who Hisa desired to be.

(When Tamiyo Senju graced her with a gentle smile that hid the hard steel in her gaze, Hisa was sure she had been blessed)

Another eight years of freedom. Another eight years of service required. Hisa could have sung, she was so happy.

(Not that she objected to Hitoshi for any reason other than, well, she didn’t particularly want to have children. He seemed nice enough in a bland, vaguely arrogant sort of way, but Hisa would have rather stabbed a kunai in her eye than become a mother. She just… well, it didn’t interest her and being forced to assist with her nieces and nephews’ births had turned her right off of the idea. Besides, she had other things to do)

And then she received her first genin team and she taught them to be hard. She taught them that the overall good of the village was the most important thing, that the Shinobi Code was to live and die by, because she knew that here too any failures would not be attributed to anything but her being a woman.

But as she watched Taji Saigo slowly work her way through a kata or Koharu Utatane argue with Tobirama. When she saw the Yondiame’s wife was both wife and Jōnin. When she saw that her eldest grandniece

(Hitoshi had finally given up waiting and married her younger sister, Narumi. They seemed happy enough. Hisa wished them the best of luck and smiled as the caged bird was stamped onto her forehead. She regretted nothing at all.)

was leaving for the Academy, eager to learn. She knew that she had done something greater than any mission that any Hokage could have assigned. She had broken free and flown further than they ever would have predicted she would.


	3. Konoe Megu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
> 
> Jiddu Krishnamurti

She was six when she first asked about the strange symbols written by the shops and her mother told her they were words and that they could tell her what she wished to know if she understood them.

(She learned later that sometimes words, too, could lie, sometimes better than any person. But she was young and naïve and entranced by something that could tell her things she didn’t yet know)

She was seven when she learned that the words were not for her, when her father told her, one evening as she was lying in bed, sandwiched in between her two sisters while her brothers curled together on a pallet behind a curtain in a corner, the learning cost money. Money that was needed for food and clothing and heat, in the winter, not for teaching a girl child to read.

(She refused to speak to her father for three days, spent two days constantly on the verge of angry tears and took one day to vow to herself that she was going to learn how to read. She was. She wasn’t sure how, exactly she was, but she was. Even if she had to wait until she was old and wrinkly had an old and wrinkly husband and six children and grandchildren and… and… she was. She was)

She was nine when she convinced her aunt to take her with her when she worked at the temple, where monks prayed and meditated and taught. They taught the sons of the wealthy and merchant class and she thought, maybe, just maybe, being closer to all that knowledge would let her learn it. Just a little.

(She hovered in the back of the classrooms, memorizing symbols. She stole papers out of the refuse piles and copied down what the symbols were, even if she didn’t yet understand them. She slipped into the babies’ class and took their papers and cleaned their room every day for a solid month, just to make sure she had the basics correct. She did)

She was eleven when she started teaching her nieces and nephews, her words and ideas taken from the temple she cleaned. She wanted to share that, to share the carefully hoarded knowledge, so that they wouldn’t have to have their father sit down on the edge of a pallet and tell them that they couldn’t achieve something that half the village could do.

(She stole this knowledge away one symbol at a time, fingers clenched tight around crumpled paper. This was knowledge taken, not given, and she knew that if she was discovered, she’d never be near the symbols again)

She was six months older when her students grew again, the father next door standing in front of her, cap twisted in his hands, asking her to teach his children something he could never give them.

(She agreed. How could she not?)

Her neighbors devoured the knowledge, excitement in their eyes when they finally grasped something that had been out of their reach before. Her brothers hovered around her in the evening, learning as they did repairs and mending, absorbing the words.

(It paid off when her youngest brother became an apprentice to a blacksmith. She could see the sudden hope in his eyes. That he might be able to leave this neighborhood and go somewhere else, where the relentless crush of poverty and hopelessness was so prevalent)

By the time she was twelve, she knew six hundred symbols and her students had tripled, knowledge rippling out from the tiny hovel to touch every person on the street and she received offerings of pamphlets and receipts, old scrolls and broken brushes from her students and their families, all of them eager for more.

(She kept working at the temple, watching the way the rich boys squandered the precious, precious gift they had been given. There were those that would give anything to have what these brats squandered so carelessly and her hands clenched around the handle of her broom when she watched them climb the wall before lessons were done)

Her students brought still more people with them and in turn, those students carried what they learned back to their own neighborhoods and streets, spreading the knowledge still farther, infecting parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents.

(Those outside of the Muichimon district, no one noticed. Not yet. It was too soon for those that expected nothing less from the village’s poor to pay attention to a few more blacksmith’s apprentices. But it wouldn’t stay that way for much longer. Not with more and more of the citizens realizing that they didn’t have to stay in the squalor that they had be regulated to. When it came, it would come like a tidal wave)

She was thirteen and a half when she received a room in which to teach her many, many students. A small room, too hot in the high summer and too cold in midwinter, but they were no longer bound by the whims of Fire Country’s rainy season. Her students loved it and brought back more paper and pamphlets scavenged from the richer sections of towns. Things they assured her weren’t stolen.

(She wasn’t quite sure she believed them, truly, but she took the gifts all the same and used them to teach)

When she was fourteen, the rich took notice, grumbling about how those from Muichimon were forgetting their place, that they were taking positions meant for their betters, that the gods had clearly meant for them to be poor in this life, to pay for the sins of the last one.

(She kept teaching. What did she care what the rich in their cozy castles thought? They already had the education that her neighbors were scrambling to obtain and for her to hoard such knowledge was selfish)

She was fifteen when she met the Hokage’s brother.

(At the time, she hadn’t even noticed he was the Hokage’s brother. He was only an arrogant Jōnin that thought that because he was a shinobi and lived outside of Muichimon that he was better than her. She had yelled at him and he’d been so shocked that she had slipped around him to continue on her way)

She began noticing him three months later, just…watching her. Observing her.

She didn’t flatter herself. The only reason she noticed was because he had let her and she ignored him for another three months, since he wasn’t doing anything scary. But when he started to leave her offerings of brushes and inks….

She marched up to him, “What are you doing?”

(He told her later that was when he started to truly fall in love with her, glaring up at him, hands on her hips, as sure as any daimyo’s wife in her palace)

“Your brushes are old.” He shrugged. “Your lessons will go better with newer brushes. So I got you new brushes.” He gave her a shy smile. “You’re upsetting Uchiha and Hyūga-san.”

She sniffed. “I don’t care.”

(Lies, she cared very much, but she was from a shinobi village and her family had been sworn to shinobi clan and the first thing she had ever learned was to never show weakness)

She was sixteen when two of her oldest students started other schools. When the neighborhood council set time aside specifically for the youngest children to learn. Tobirama hovered near the edges of her awareness, observing everything, but he never interfered beyond leaving more brushes, so she let him be.

But he kept coming and even started interacting with the children, who were in awe of the shinobi that had graced their presence. He offered suggestions and encouragement, seeming to have an endless supply of patience of them.

(She refused to admit that he was getting to her. Was making her want with a viciousness that surprised even her. Especially since she knew that it was impossible. Hokage’s brothers didn’t have anything to do with gutter rats from Muichimon)

The first time he proposed she laughed in his face.

He smiled gently at her, agreed he was joking and continued to visit the children. She ignored him then, determined to not let him get to her. Because he wasn’t actually interested in her.

And then he did it again. And she didn’t laugh then. Because she liked him enough that to know that he was joking with her hurt. More than she thought it would.

But the third….

The third time she lost her temper. She didn’t want him to keep hurting her like that.

“I’m not joking.” He grabbed her hand and she stilled. “I do like you. And I would like very much to marry you.”

“Why?” She could barely speak above a whisper. “Why me? I’m… I’m not rich, or from a good family or going to stop teaching.”

“Because you aren’t rich or from a good family and won’t stop teaching.” Tobirama’s eyes were very beautiful, she decided, right then. Especially when he was trying to convince her of sometihng. “Because you were passionate about something and figured out how to get it yourself.”

She licked her lips, nervous. “I won’t have to stop teaching?” If he said yes, if he forced her choose… it would break her heart, she thought, but she’d walk away from him. Her children came first. They always had to come first.

“No.” Tobirama smiled. “You may have to expand though.”

“Oh.” She returned the smile. “I think I can handle that.”

“I know you can.” He tugged her gently, pulling her closer. “I never thought anything less.”

It’s a small wedding, for a Hokage’s brother and the presumptive next Hokage, but that’s fine because Megu’s family is there and she could see her students lurking around the edges, stealing food off of the tables.

Tobirama saw them too, but he only grinned and distracted the Uchiha clan head with a long conversation on Academy policies.

She didn’t stop teaching, in fact she increased her efforts (she had Tobirama’s blessing and support and that was what mattered to her) dispite the grumbling from the clan heads (just because they couldn’t appreciate how much an education could mean to someone didn’t mean that they children she helped didn’t appreciate it). She wasn’t doing it for them.

And then she was a Hokage’s wife and then a mother, but she kept teaching - that had been her first love, her true love and she would not stop until every child in Konoha had the opprotunity to learn.

When the first school was built, when her first students stepped through the doors as teachers…. She knew then, that she had accomplished something worth being remembered for.


	4. Saigo Taji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.  
> C. S. Lewis

She joins the Academy when she is five, only the fourth girl to walk through the doors with the intention of walking out a shinobi. She is small, much smaller than her classmates, and filled with the confidence of the very young.

(What she doesn’t know until later is that it took nearly two years to grant her an allowance to train – her mother was from Iwakagure, had defected, and there had been those that had worried that she was a mole. By that point she has been a shinobi for nearly a decade)

She is nothing remarkable and passes only because there are very few clan children in her class, but that is enough to earn her a headband and a jounin sensei that isn’t comfortable with the idea of being in charge of a small girl child.

(Kata-sensei is kind, in his own way, and does his best to prepare her. It’s not enough, not nearly, but Taji makes do)

She graduates into a war that she doesn’t understand and is in no way prepared for.

(Nothing could have prepared her. Nothing prepares a person for war. For having to sleep with a kunai in her hand and another under her pillow, for not knowing where the next attack might come from)

After Kata-sensei is lamed, she is temporarily reassigned to Tobirama-sama’s team, her two teammates sent elsewhere.

(She saves Hiruzen’s life on patrol, when they are ambushed by an incursion team from Lightning. She manages to have bragging rights for nearly a month, until he saves her from an ambush by Mist)

Before being bounced from team to team as the war began to come to a close, until she is finally returned to Kata-sensei.

(Her two teammates have found apprenticeships and a third for the Chunin exams, leaving Taji to watch as they advanced without her. Kata-sensei doesn’t say anything, just quietly takes her under his wing. She loves him until the day he dies for that kindness)

She makes Chūnin because she manages to punch Hisao Hyūga right in his smug, asshole face.

That isn’t exactly true. She squeaks by into Chūnin because of “a demonstrated use of tactics and basic techniques, an ability to think clearly and a determination in the face of superior enemy abilities”.

Which translates to her having an excellent grasp of several D rank ninjutsu, not losing her head when she realized that she was facing a Hyūga and, again, the fact she manages to make it close enough to punch said Hyūga in the face. She broke his nose. She’s very proud.

She also broke three ribs and her arm, but since she was able to stand and then limp out of the arena afterwards, she gets the win.

Once she makes Chūnin she’s not quite sure what to do next. She doesn’t want to go on to Jōnin, doesn’t want to teach at the Academy.

(She isn’t Hisa Hyuga-san, fighting her way forward and blazing a burning trail behind her. She isn’t even Koharu-chan, who swoops in to rescue the horrifically flawed kunoichi program and shape it into something, if not glorious, than at least sustainable)

And the first time she leaves the village on a mission, deep into the Land of Stone, she spends more time digging holes to conceal her vomit than sleeping. She requests internal missions after that and finds she can’t even manage those if she is outside the village for more than two days.

(She thinks herself broken and useless. What good is a shinobi that can’t see anything but death in the shadows, to the point that the shadows feel real?)

It is Tobirama-sensei’s wife that suggests, gently, that perhaps she ought to look into an administrative position?

So she does.

And she finds the library.

(Not even three decades into the life of this new village, the library is awe inspiring to Taji, who is the only one assigned to the library on a permanent basis. The other Chunin find the task beneath them and, much like the missions desk, it is one of the least desirable assignments to be tasked to)

She’s happy there, buried among scrolls and tablets, sorting and cataloging each new item that is brought back from a mission.

Time passes and Taji watches as her contemporaries die, one after another.

(There were twenty four students that passed to become official genin from her class. By the time that she is fifteen, twelve of them are dead. Seven years later, at the age of twenty two, there are seventeen dead)

Kagami Uchiha begins to hand around the library between missions, pestering her for scrolls and techniques.

(She thinks he is flirting with her. She hopes he is flirting with her)

And then another war and Taji can no longer remain in the library.

They say later, when they are writing their pretty histories to place into her library that it wasn’t really a war. She doesn’t believe them. Does what they call it truly matter to the hundreds of civilians that were devastated by it? Or to the names that were added to the memorial stone? She decides it doesn’t, it was a war. Maybe because of the dead she saw. Maybe because of the devastation that carved new features into the landscape. Or maybe because six months into the not war, Kagami’s teammate, Danzo Shimura, presses Kagami’s hitai-ate into her hands with a mumbled “he would have wanted you to have this”.

(She wonders what it says about her, that she is more devastated by that one event than any of the hundreds of others that occur over the next six months. As she clutches the cool metal in her hands and stands in front of the memorial stone, the taste of regret in her mouth, she finds that she doesn’t much care)

She returns to the library.

She meets a nice civilian man three years later.

She marries him the year after that.

He is nice enough, her husband, sweet and caring. And he is the furthest thing from a shinobi that it is possible to be.

(She buries the extra hitai-ate in the back of her closet and refuses to take it out except for once a year. She will not do that to her husband, who doesn’t even know that there is another that he could be compared to)

She has three children and loves them with everything she has. And when they decide to follow in her footsteps and become shinobi, she keeps the screams inside. Because she will die for the village and everyone in it, but is another thing entirely to let her children also die for the village.

She is nearly forty when war beckons again.

(This time she steels her heart and volunteers for the medic corps. She will never be able to lead the charge, but she can help pick up the pieces afterwards and she prays to her ancestors every day that she will never meet her children in the tents)

She is one of the medics that greets the survivors of Uzushiogakure as they trudge into the Land of Fire, escorted by Sakumo Hatake and his team

(There are so few of them. Taji had visited Uzushio when she had been younger, before she had been a Chunin even, and she had always remembered how vibrant and full of like it had been. Now there were fewer than a hundred members of the village left)

She takes three of the orphans into her home, two little boys and a girl that was so pained by grief that she reminded Taji of a snapping turtle.

As ever, Taji returns to the library, retreating into her scrolls and books. The little red haired hellion follows her, when the Academy and village began to hurt more than they heal. She, in turn, is followed by a small blond boy, who devours the books like they’re a feast he’s never realized was there.

“You’re not my mother.” Kushina tells her when the girl makes chūnin and Taji presents her with three books written in Uzushio.

Taji smiles at her gently. “I know.”

The two boys move out when they graduate, but somehow always seem to be there for dinner once a week. But they were so much younger than Kushina, more willing to allow replacements into their life. It doesn’t matter to Taji, Mito and Kotaro and Kushina as much her children as the ones born of her body.

She never leaves the library again, too old for the next war. Too old when the Kyūbi devastates the village and too weak to look past her grief at the death of five of her six children to see the tiny miracle of the baby that might have called her grandmother.

(There had been one hundred eleven children that became genin the same year Taji did. By the time that Hiruzen finally died, there were only four still living and Taji felt the grief of that in her bones, a grief that weighed heavier every time she saw new faces walk through her library doors)


	5. Ayame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” 
> 
> ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Ayame falls in love with the ramen shop from the moment that she steps into it, toddling carefully after her papa while her mama walks behind, making sure that she doesn’t fall.

She loves the hustle and the people and the way that her papa can make them happy with a bowl. She loves meeting the civilians and the shinobi and hearing about other countries and far away places that she’ll never see.

(Has no desire to see, if she’s honest with herself. Konoha, with its bustling city and the farms that surround it, is enough for her)

But… but more than anything, she loves it when the Hokage - the Hokage! - comes into the shop with his pretty girlfriend (Ayame is envious of her hair, which is such a pretty red, almost like the sunset when it hits the mountain. Ayame’s hair is a boring brown, that hardly stands out from everyone else’s).

And then the Kyubi. Ayame doesn’t remember much, only being a little scared (they had the best Kage in all of the world and the best jonin ever. Why should she be scared?)

But that didn’t matter. Because the next morning, when her papa and mama brought her out of the refuge, the Hokage was dead.

That, more than anything, even seeing the Kyubi standing over the village and feeling the hate (she hadn’t known anything could feel that much hate towards anything) scared her. Hokages weren’t supposed to die. Hokages were supposed to be strong and protect people. How could they do that if they died?

But life moved on and Ayame focused on helping her papa as her mama got sicker and sicker. The doctors couldn’t say what was wrong with her, only that her lungs weren’t well. That they were getting weaker and weaker.

Her mama taught her to cook, to make everything with love.

(”Love is work, sweetie.” Her mama’s voice was so soft that Ayame had to strain to hear it as she carefully chopped vegetables. “Love is hard work. It will make you cry and be so angry that you won’t be able to see straight.”

Ayame wrinkled her nose. “It doesn’t sound very nice. Why do people do it?” She didn’t think she wanted to have anything to do with it.

Her mama laughed, softly. So softly, because that was all her mama was these days. Soft. “Because it can take you flying, until you don’t know which way is down. It keeps you warm, when everything seems cold and lonely.” A gentle hand on her wrist and she looked at her mother, staring into warm brown eyes. “Because it forgives, even when something seems unforgivable.”

“Oh.” Ayame’s own voice was soft, as she contemplated the thought of that. “That sounds nicer.”

Her mother smiled gently. “It really is sweetie. It really is.”)

So Ayame made everything with as much love as she could muster, determined to listen to her mother.

Even when it was hard.

And when she saw the little Kyubi boy standing in the door, shivering from cold, she bit her lip and made up another bowl. Just for him.

He looked so scared. Of her. She wasn’t even fifteen yet and was a civilian and she wasn’t scary. So she held the bowl in one had and held out her hand in another. She could feel her papa watching her, but she knew he wasn’t upset. He’d have let her know if he was upset.

“Come on in, then.” She waited patiently until he carefully placed his hand in hers and she pulled him out of the cold.

Love keeps you warm, when everything seems cold and lonely.

Ayame wondered how long he’d been left in the cold.

But the years passed and she still made everything with love, for everyone from Naruto (who she did love) to Danzo-san with the Hokage (she did not care for - something about him always made her skin crawl).

She watched the village grow some more, from the clean up after the Kyubi, to the numb horror after the Uchiha Massacre.

It wasn’t though, until she was older, that she finally stepped out of her village.

(Her aunt in the capital invited her to come and live with their family for a few years, to see something beyond Konoha’s walls. Ayame said yes)

The capital was large - so much larger than Konoha.

Ayame didn’t like it - didn’t like how brightly lit it was, even into the early hours of the morning (a security risk, her mind whispered, a spotlight so that everyone can find you). And the civilians (they were all civilians here, she thought, unsettled) talked too loudly and shared too many secrets.

(If she had asked Iruka-san, he could have told her that Konoha’s civilians, growing up in a ninja village, had as much in common with civilians in other cities as the shinobi had with civilians in their own town. That is to say… not much at all)

And when she went back to Konoha, with more recipes than she knew what to do with (a lie, she knew exactly what to do with them) she was so relieved to be home.

Because home was the street lights dimmed with the sunset and home was being able to speak without actually saying anything, just in case there were foreign shinobi.

She tied her apron back on and refastened her headband, because home was also the ramen shop, where shinobi and civilians could come for food and warmth. Even if only for a little bit.

Especially the children.

Ayame loves that the genin teams pick their restaurant to come to and she always asks them about their day, about their missions.

(Genin team missions are always little things, that don’t matter. And she exchanges a slight wink with Ebisu when Konohamaru boasts about catching the cat in the same breath he says its classfied. His team hasn’t gotten to those missions yet, where they will be given tiny secrets to see if they can handle the big ones)

And then Naruto returns and Pain attacks and the village is destroyed, even more than it was when the Kyubi attacked.

(She also hears a rumor that everyone died but was brought back to life, but she isn’t so sure about that. There are some things that stretch believeablity, even if you live in a shinobi village)

But she makes sure that their shop is one of the first repaired.

(Or rather, she suspects, Naruto annoys the shinobi doing the repairs into doing their shop first. But he was polite enough when she asked and he did take the bowl of ramen she offered him, so she isn’t too fussed about how it happens)

Because she’s learned, over the years, that sometimes, having a warm spot to go when everything seems cold and lonely, a place where there is laughter and a little bit of love, well, that can make all of the difference in the world.

Maybe it isn’t moving mountains or preforming miracles or even leading a village. But, Ayame’s mother told her, when she was very small, even the tiniest spark can help to light the biggest flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quite frankly, this is the chapter I'm most unhappy about, but Ayame deserves to have her story told just as much as the rest, even if I'm not pleased with how well I told it.


	6. Takura Matsuri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?” 
> 
> ― Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero

She joins the Academy because there isn’t really anything else for her to do. It’s just her and her dad and Matsuri doesn’t know anything except to be a shinobi.

(Her mother is a kunoichi from Lightning. Her paternal grandparents died before she was ever born, during the Kyūbi attack, but her dad says that they were both shinobi too so, really, she was always going to be a shinobi)

She’s placed in a class with a sensei that does nothing but belittle her and everyone that he considers inferior, but then she meets Sakura, who agrees to help her and Joben and Sofu and it takes Matsuri less than two weeks to decide that she wants to be like Sakura when she grows up.

It takes another year before she graduates and then she’s on a team with Sofu and Kaede Tsukihana, who is shy and soft and if Matsuri hadn’t been introduced to her by Sakura-senpai, she wouldn’t have believed the other girl actually graduated.

(They pass the teamwork test that Yasuki-sensei gives them in thirty minutes, because of course they do. How else will she face Iruka-sensei and her dad and even Sakura-senpai, whose teammates left her? Matsuri had gotten that bit of gossip from Konohamaru, who thinks that one of Sakura-senpai’s teammates, Naruto, is the best thing ever. Matsuri disagrees. After the first fight they agree to not talk about it)

They spend nine months chasing cats

(well, one cat and after the fifth time, Matsuri is ready to swear that the cat is the reincarnated spirit of Madara Uchiha, come back to have his revenge on the village. Sofu and Kaede laughingly agree)

And weeding gardens in between painting fences

(Matsuri vows that she is hiring proper civilians to do all of her maintenance when she’s older and actually owns a house with a garden and a fence so that some other poor genin team doesn’t have to suffer like she is. Her dad laughs and says that he vowed the same thing)

Before Yasuki-sensei even considers them for a C-rank.

They’re first C-rank goes sideways three days in when the caravan that they’re guarding is attacked by bandits and Kaede and the merchant’s son both get kidnapped during the fighting. Yasuki-sensei presses his lips into a thin line and looks between them and the caravan full of civilians that have probably never held a weapon in their life and the hills that the bandits have retreated to.

(This is the first time that Matsuri meets the ANBU that seem to haunt Yasuki-sensei’s steps. The leader drops out of the trees and cocks his head to the side before he and three other ANBU (Matsuri recognizes one of them – there aren’t that many people with skin that even close to the same shade as hers in Konoha, so she always notices when someone does – but doesn’t say anything when Katsurou-san slips after the leader)

Kaede and the merchant’s son show up three hours later completely unharmed, with the boy babbling about how Kaede was to take out so many bandits on her own.

(Kaede tells them later, in hushed whispers, about the group of ANBU that somehow managed to kill them all while making it look like she’d done it.)

Kaede gets three marriage offers to take back to her mother before the trip is over. Matsuri looks them over and is frankly boggled by the sheer amount of… well, legal talk in them.

(“They look like contracts, like we get for jobs,” she complains.

Kaede shrugs. “That’s because they are. Besides, it doesn’t matter; I’m betrothed to the Daimyo’s favorite grandson in any case. We’re getting married as soon as my chūnin obligation is served.”

That is the first time that Matsuri is aware of the vast gulf between her and Kaede. She’s never going to have to worry about marriage contracts; her father would laugh hysterically if she brought subject up.)

And then the war.

She spends weeks slogging through dirt until the rainy season hits and then its mud. She’s dirty and scared, because this… not even the stories that her dad told her about the Third Shinobi War managed to convey how… tense everything was. She can’t sleep unless she has her hand wrapped around a kunai, unless at least two other people are on watch.

(She wonders if the higher ranking shinobi can cope with it better. If this is what it means, to be a shinobi. She shivers and wonders if she’ll ever be able to stop feeling like an attack is coming from everywhere)

Their team is split up and she’s stuck on a team with two genin: one from Kumo and one from Iwa. The chūnin in charge of them is from Suna and Matsuri wonders when her life became so twisted.

(Toshiro is nice enough and is willing to share jutsus that fit with her lightning affinity and Rin-san is like a more grown up version of Sakura and Matsuri wants to be like her too, when she gets older, because Rin-san is amazing. The less said about Mei the better)  
  
Mei is the granddaughter of the Tsuchikage and Matsuri resigns herself to spending most of her shinobi career around people that move in very different social settings than her.

(She also resigns herself to Mei being a snob, which the other kunoichi isn’t. Just… they just don’t get along. Toshiro smirks and says it’s because they’re Earth and Lightning and thus they’re not ever going to get along)

But they work well enough together that after, when the dust is settled and Madara (and how was that even possible?) is finally, finally dead (for real this time apparently) the Hokage places Matsuri on one of the four co-village teams. There are five of them, on for each village, and Matsuri is absurdly grateful that her team is stationed out of Konoha.

(She wonders if that’s fair, the Tsuchikage’s granddaughter staying in another village, but then she finds out the Konohamaru is going to be assigned to Kumo, so she guesses that it’s going to be balanced somehow)

Somehow, it works. It’s hard, sometimes, and she spends most of her time complaining, but when her rotation is up and she’s allowed to pick a new assignment, she signs right back up for the Ambassadorial Team.

(She refuses to admit how pleased she is when she steps into the briefing room in Kirigakure and sees Toshiro and Mei waiting for her. They have a new member, this time, since Rin-san retired, but the brand new chūnin (Akane of Kirigakure) seems like she’ll be fine, as soon as she stops squeaking whenever Mei says anything to her (Mei’s head is swollen enough as it is, without help)

Somehow, home expands from Konoha to Konoha and Kumo to Kirigakure to Suna and beyond. Matsuri, as she watches her own children explore the nations, thinks that maybe, just maybe, that might have been what the Shodaime might have truly wanted, when he first began that experiment over a century ago.

 


	7. Haruno Yuki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”   
> ― Shannon L. Alder

She was named for her grandmother, a battle ax of a woman that served in two wars and raised five children to adulthood and died defending a village that wasn’t hers.

 

It was a lot to live up to, most days. Really, all days.

 

But she did her best, pouring her energies into her school work and then into her shinobi training because what else could she do? She wasn’t the best (that was Inuzuka Kogane) or the brightest (that was Hyuuga Hisa, who was also named for a relative) but she was the most stubborn. And maybe she couldn’t do everything right the first time, but she could (and did) work until she did manage to get it right. Because what else could she do?

 

Her cousins were also shinobi (Sakura-chan was the best, was apprenticed to the Copy nin and Yuki wanted to be as good, as special as she was) and Yuki needed to be able to keep up. She had to be, because her mother hadn’t wanted her to be a shinobi and Yuki had pleaded and pleaded with her until she had said yes.

 

She graduated in the lower middle of her class and was promptly assigned to Inuzuka Kogane and Tsuda Chojiro.

 

Her graduation gift was a tightly wrapped silk bundle that had the look of having been recently covered in dust and shoved into a corner somewhere. She tried not to be disappointed - her older siblings had all gotten new sets of kunai, new clothing. Useful things. Practical things.

 

But then she carefully rolled it open, later that night in her room (she hadn’t opened it downstairs, in front of strangers, mindful of the reproachful glances that her aunts and uncles were giving her father) she gasped in delight. A sealing kit, complete with…. She reached out with trembling fingers to gently touch the scroll that lay in the middle, surrounded by brushes, inks and seals.

 

It was old and she knew, instantly, that this was her grandmother’s.

 

She carefully opened it, rolling it to its full length and frowned at the numerous sealing arrays that were arranged meticulously all along the paper. She pressed against the smallest one, feeding her chakra into it like she had been taught and gasped when three other scrolls appeared.

 

She clapped her hands over her mouth to keep her amazement in. She hadn’t been given a single scroll. No, she’d been given a library. Her hands were trembling as she took in the magitude of the gift. This….

 

(She had known that her grandmother had been shinobi, but that she had given that up when she had come to Konoha. She had never asked what type of shinobi, but now, she thought dazedly, she had her answer).

 

But she still didn’t know what to do with her gift. It was one thing to have a sealing kit. It was quite another to actually know what to do with it.

 

So she did what she did best and started reading. She started with Konoha’s books on sealing (few and far between. Despite a long alliance with Whirpool, Konoha themselves had never favored sealing much beyond the basics) and slowly began to puzzle her way through her family’s scrolls.

 

Her teammates didn’t really understand why she wanted to learn sealing (it wasn’t flashy or even all that destructive on the surface of things, two items that all Konoha shinobi seemed to have a massive weakness for (even herself, she wasn’t going to lie. She loved water combat jutsus) ) but Yuki kept going.

 

Because in between the tips on sealing and the shortcuts to get her seals working better, there was a treasure trove of comments on the Village Hidden in the Whirlpool and their culture and customs. Yuki carefully copied down those protions and showed them to her father. He looked at her and carefully took the notes, handling them as though they were some of the most precious things he’d ever been given.

 

There was a small community from Whirlpool living in Konoha but there were no elders, no one older than her aunt. No one that knew, with any great certainity, much about the culture that they’d been forced to leave behind. Yuki, who knew, somewhat, how much her parents felt like they were adrift. Not truely a part of Konoha, but not a part of the culture they’d left behind.

 

Yuki became better and the first time that she managed to seal a jutsu, she grinned, all sharp teeth and edges. Kagone had helped and when she saw the way it worked in the middle of a fight, she punched the air a swung Yuki up into a bone breaking hug. It took the air right out of her lungs and she flushed, cheeks flaming.

 

She wasn’t sure what to feel about that - she’d never felt like that before - so she put it to the side and moved on. She could focus on that later, after she’d gotten further along and gotten to know herself better.

 

(Sakura-chan hadn’t been much help, since her cousin had, as far as Yuki knew, displayed no interest in anyone and hadn’t done much more than stare at her blankly before suggesting they spar. Yuki had agreed and then go to find her other cousin, Fumi, who at least had kissed a boy.

 

Fumi had sighed and taken a break. “You really ought to be talking to your mother.”

 

Yuki made a face and shrugged. She loved her mother, she did, but her mother also seemed to resist the idea that Yuki wasn’t a baby anymore. So, Yuki would hold off on the idea of crushes for a little bit longer. She considered. Maybe a lot longer.)

 

So she waited.

 

And Kagane was always there, helping and supporting her and Yuki was sure that, even if she never moved beyond this point, Kagane would be a friend for life.

 

And after the war, after all of the villages had settled into a sort of peace (puncuated by occasional fighting, but nothing like what she knew her parents and her friends grandparents had lived through. Yuki kept going with her seals, got better and made a name for herself.

 

Kagane grumbled the first time they realized that Yuki was the first in her class to earn a place in the Bingo Book. An accomplishment, in its own way, they knew. A dubious accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless.

 

(Sai-kun bought her a bottle of sake. An expensive bottle and Yuki didn’t ask where he’d gotten it, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. What she did know was that it was very good and very, very strong. Her entire team was completely drunk before they’d finished a quarter of it)

 

She grew up, became a chunin and moved in with Kagane.

 

She became a jonin and Sakura-chan had been the one to hand her the new flak jacket and armband, her eyes sparkling with pride (Yuki felt something in her relax, that this cousin who had done so much and was so far above her would be proud of her. That was the best feeling of all. Well, that and her entire family gathered in the small kitchen, smilling at her)

 

And then…

 

And then she was a jonin instructor and the first thing out of all three students mouths was “will you teach us to seal?”

 

This, she thought, pulling her own inks out of her vest pocket, this could be a legacy she would be proud to live up to.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.”  
> ― Ben Okri

Those were the stories that she liked best. The stories of her grandmother and mother and through the whole village, each one contributing something amazing to the whole. She learned her lessons from them, drew inspiration from them, even if they were lost to a time so long ago that not even her grandmother had known them personally.

 

“We are but half the sky, dear one.” Her own mother would whisper before she would pair each story with another.

 

Tamiyo, who protected the village from within, worked from a position of unheard of power, with her stepson who founded the village and her son who protected it from without.

 

Hisa, who shook the foundations until they rattled and then created new ones for others to build off of, with her once lover, whose own granddaughter would be own of the wisest and best of the Hyuuga Clan Heads. (She loved the story more of the granddaughter, who had loved the Kyubi so much that it had saved the world for her)

 

Megu Konoe, who had taught everyone to read, to pursue knowledge, with her husband who had taught them to fight and together they had taught so that their students would fight well and so they would fight smart.

 

Taji Saigo with her family and who had survived so many hurts (because not all stories are happy and there is value in just managing to wake up each morning, no matter what yesterday has brought)

 

Ayame and her ramen shop, who was a warm port in a storm and who loved everyone and never turned away a villager with her husband, who was a shinobi and if not as open and friendly, still a calming presence for many.

 

Matsuri, who travelled everywhere and built bridges between the nations that still stood and were still honored, with her team, who even in death had refused to be seperated (there was a statue to them, she knew, in Kumo. She was going to see it one day)

 

And Yuki, who had returned funjustu to the world, who had started her own school and whose students were some of the best now. Yuki was her hero, more than anyone, because Yuki, with Kagane, had resettled Whirlpool, with the Hokage’s blessing. There were six kages again and she had wanted to be one, when she was younger. She hadn’t cared which. At least not until she’d gotten older. Then she hadn’t wanted to be a kage anymore.

 

She had wanted to be Hisa and Tamiyo and Sakura when she was younger. Now she thought she might like to be Ayame, who had no great deeds to her name but was still remembered because she so kind.

 

(To be kind is no fault and is to be applauded. The world might be better off, if more people were like Ayame. That was her father’s rumble, as he tucked her in at night. Her mother said he was biased, since Ayame was his great-great-grandmother)

 

But there were always more stories to hear. More lessons to be learned. And maybe, one day, she’d be someone else’s story to hear.

 


End file.
